A New Study Says That High Intensity Training is Beneficial for Older Adults.

Take that information with a grain of salt.

Imagine this: you’re a mostly sedentary 70 year-old who occasionally takes leisurely walks around the lake next to your house. There’s a cohort of septuagenarians who also use the lake for fitness purposes, with one big difference — they’re sprinting for short distances. In exercise parlance, this is called or “high intensity interval training,” or “HIIT.”

You note the strain on their faces and the sweat pouring down their clothing. It occurs to you that their exercise regimen might more conducive for preserving cardiovascular fitness than your “tiptoeing through the tulips” routine.

Now, a new study has just been released that confirms you’re right. This is what’s commonly called a “slow news day” in the journalism profession. But, still, it’s worth digging into the facts to see just how this information fails to jibe with everyday reality.

The five-year study, conducted in Norway, followed participants between the ages of 70 and 77 in a city called Trondheim. The authors of the study picked out 500 people from an original sample of 1,500 people and divided them into groups doing “moderate” or “very hard” exercise. The bottom line was that — surprise! — men and women who engaged in “very hard” exercise lost less of their cardiovascular fitness that people that engaged in more moderate efforts.

What do those results mean in the real world? Not much. Here’s why…

The first big flaw is that people who already had a certain level of fitness “self-selected” for the survey. So, essentially, very aerobically fit people were tested to see if consistently doing the things that made them fit would lead to a smaller decrease in fitness as they aged. The answer was “yes.” This is called circular logic.

The authors of the study even conceded as much in their footnotes, writing:

“We acknowledge …participants in this study were relatively healthy and may not reflect the general older population. Individuals with higher initial fitness may be more likely to choose or sustain higher exercise intensity, which potentially introduces confounding and reverse causality. Therefore, caution is warranted when extrapolating these findings to other demographic groups or clinical populations.”

This scenario reminds me of my good friend and client Michael Harris, who I profiled in this article. Michael climbed 75,000 feet by bike on a trip to Japan to celebrate his 75th birthday. Incredibly impressive, obviously. But he’s also a huge outlier. The study would be have been much more effective if it tested people with limited fitness and introduced them to a gradually more vigorous program to see how they fared over time.

After all, according to the study’s own statistics, only 11% of American adults and 31% percent of Norwegian adults meet the threshold for recommended daily activity.

The second big flaw is how the study defines fitness. Cardiovascular capacity is important, but it’s only one facet of fitness. I’m an avid cyclist and hiker. I’ve also been a personal trainer for nearly two decades. If someone were to ask me the most crucial component of fitness as you age — I’d say strength training, hands down.

Sarcopenia (muscle loss) is an inevitable process of aging. For most people, it declines about 3% to 5% each decade, starting at age 30. Muscle loss affects everything from lifting groceries and getting out of a chair to balance and coordination. Simply put, the more muscle you have, the more you increase your chances of longevity.

In a decade-long survey involving 100,000 people, (ranging in age from 55 to 74), weekly strength training resulted in a 9%-22% reduction in mortality.That same study also showed that moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise appeared to lower risk by 24% to 34% and the greatest reduction in mortality rates (41%-47%) was among the people that combined both forms of exercise.

Leg strength, core strength, and balance are the chief culprits in falls, which are the biggest source of injuries for those 65 and over, according to the CDC.

So, what can we glean from this study? Not a hell of a lot, sadly. Mainly that healthy people are likely to stay that way for a while longer. But, again, it’s worth exploring studies like these to examine the fine print, and to approach them with a healthy dose of skepticism.

One thing is abundantly clear, however — and you probably don’t need a survey to figure it out. If you want to live a longer and healthier life, you better get moving.